Matchbox Twenty At Mohegan

Alcohol Inspired Lead Song From Latest Album

March 05, 2013|By ERIK OFGANG, Special To The Courant, The Hartford Courant

"She's So Mean," the lead single from Matchbox Twenty's latest album, was inspired, in part, by a common muse of the music industry: alcohol.

"When we wrote that we were pretty drunk in Nashville," says Rob Thomas, the group's lead singer. "We had this idea we wanted to have Kyle [Cook, the group's lead guitar player] play one chord progression and each person would write a different melody for each of the part of the verse. Within about five minutes we had the different verses going together."

Over the next three months the group collaborated on the melody for the chorus and wrote the lyrics for the song, which tells the story of a destructive relationship.

"Everybody knows that girl or that guy in their life that you just know is horrible for you but for some reason you just keep going back to them," says Thomas. The single has helped power the group's latest studio album "North," which was released in September.

Matchbox Twenty will perform in support of the new album on Friday, March 8, at 7:30 p.m., at the Mohegan Sun Arena. The opening act is Matt Hires whose catchy acoustic flavored pop single "Restless Heart" was recently featured as an iTunes "Single Of The Week."

Matchbox 20 will play a mix of tracks from the new album and a selection of past hits such as "3 a.m.," "Real World," and "How Far We've Come."

"We're playing better than we've ever played," Thomas says. He adds the group always tries to make sure that shows have something for everyone. "I hate going to a concert and only hearing the band playing their new record, not hearing the songs that I really want to hear. And I hate not hearing any songs from the new record. I like it when a show has some ebb and flow to it, where it kind of goes up and down and kind of has a story to it."

"North" is the band's first new album since 2007's "Exile on Mainstream." Since the early 2000s the band has often been on hiatus as Thomas has pursued his solo career. As a solo artist Thomas produced hits such as "Lonely No More," and "This is How a Heart Breaks." In the past Thomas has served as the primary songwriter for Matchbox Twenty but this album was intentionally more collaborative. Many of the songs were co-written by Thomas and the group's other original members Paul Doucette and Kyle Cook.

"It's more of a reason for us to go on as a unit when we're collaborating," Thomas says. But, he adds there was no collaborating just for collaborations sake. "When we write a song like 'Overjoyed' [the second single from 'North'] I think that's as good as any song I've ever written alone. We're not the kind of band that would do it just because we're like 'we're not going to be in a band unless everybody writes.' We're like 'we want everyone to write but if what you're doing we don't like we're going to tell you we don't like it.' After knowing each other for 20 years we can do that pretty boldly with each other and nobody seems to care."

Raised primarily in Florida Thomas now lives in Bedford, N.Y., with his wife, model Marisol Maldonado. Thomas has one child from a previous relationship. Thomas and his wife run the Sidewalk Angels Foundation, a not-for-profit organization that raises funds for grassroots organizations across the country that support animal welfare and other good causes such as childhood health and the fight against homelessness.

In addition to his solo career and work with Matchbox Twenty Thomas has also written songs for Tom Petty, Willie Nelson, Mick Jagger, Marc Anthony, and Daughtry, among others. His 1999 collaboration with Santana produced the triple-platinum hit "Smooth" which also won three Grammy's and was featured on the Santana album "Supernatural." Thomas wrote the song with songwriter Itaal Shur and sang lead on it. He says he never expected the song to be a hit.

"I really didn't know the song was even a single until I was walking down the street in SoHo [where Thomas lived at the time] and there was a convertible full of hot girls with the top down blaring the song on the radio," he says.

Thomas says that when he's writing material that he's going to sing and perform he has to make sure he likes it enough to live with it for a long time.

"We have to stand by it because we all have to go and spend the next year and a half of our lives playing this music and telling everybody how much we like it and we don't want to be lying," he says. He adds one of his early hits "Real World" has a lyric that feels false. "There's this line 'I wonder what it's like to the head honcho.' Now I'm 41 years old and I feel silly singing that line every night. I would change that line. Who says head honcho? I feel like I'm some '70s blaxploitation white guy villain character."